11.28.2010

Fastest Thanksgiving break EVER


Whoa. Where did those two weeks go? I'm trying really hard not to let this be a repeat of my journaling experience in high school..."Oh, wow! 6 months went by, here's what happened: insert latest boy drama." "Holy cow! I can't believe it's been a whole year! Not much happened."

Haha. Like I said, I'm trying. The past two weeks have just been INSANE and this was like the absolute LAST thing on my mind. The first week of the previously mentioned two weeks was allllll about SEP's (parent teacher conferences...so why is the acronym SEP? I think it's student educational plan...maybe...) so getting ready for those takes a LOT of work. Making sure you have everyone's student work file organized and updated, grades, standards reports, etc. Oh and running through possible conversation scenarios with the "problem" children- maybe only I do that- but it helps. So those lasted from 1:30-8:00 on Thursday and Friday night (30 min. with each kid). Talk about exhausting.

Then my family came in on Saturday morning, so cue the next week of nearly no sleep. We had a good time though. Thanksgiving was at my house! Woo for having enough space to do that!! We had my family, James' mom and grandparents and his brother Andrew, and Shanti. It was good times. Especially when James' grandparents found out Shanti is a wicked good singer and made her sing a church hymn to everyone. Loved that. Thank you. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling so hot, so I managed to eat a roll, two bites of turkey, a few vegetables and some potato casserole. Not how I pictured the day going in my head. At least my Ghirardelli white chocolate raspberry cheesecake was a success! (A delicious success at that).



I didn't realize that I didn't take ANY pictures until the night they were leaving and we went up to Salt Lake to see the Christmas lights around Temple Square (I'm out of whack lately...no blogging...no pictures...what is this?!). Soo those were jipped from Michaela's facebook.







11.13.2010

No estas sonando?!

They put one of these up on State Street in Orem recently. WHAT THE HECK. Has anyone else seen these McDonald's billboards around? EN ESPANOL?! For some reason, that pisses me off. I mean, it's not like it's Taco Bell and EVERYBODY knows what "yo quiero taco bell" means (not to mention, a cute little chihuahua says it and they're like TACOS), but this is McDonalds for one, and two, nobody who is only functional (or doesn't know it at all) in Spanish knows what sonando means. So, I know, McDonald's clearly isn't trying to come up with a new catch phrase or slogan, they're targeting Spanish speakers. Spanish speakers only. Why does that erk me so? Well, first of all. I don't care what language you speak, you can recognize those golden arches next to a picture of a big mac. Who cares what it says, the underlying message is always FOOD. I MIGHT NOT BE GOOD FOR YOU BUT I LOOK DELICIOUS SO EAT ME.
I just get ticked off when everybody tries to adapt to the huge influx of Spanish only speakers. Learn some English if you're plannin' on stickin' around! It'll open up a HUGE new world of billboard advertisements and that's just the start. Don't go wasting prime billboard advertisement space with words I don't even understand.

Racist? No.

Bleghasdf.

11.08.2010

I've neglected you. I'm sorry.

Wow. I haven't even blogged Halloween yet! That's what happens when your Mom comes to visit, you move, you get sick, and work actually feels like work. It's been a busy two weeks, needless to say. In reverse chronological order:

Halloween!

Loved it. My kids came in the CUTEST costumes. My favorite? A homemade porcupine made out of a big brown sweatshirt and brown golf tees. Excellent. What was I? Well. This stressed me out to end in. I wanted to come up with something homemade/crafty/creative, but the procrastinative (I think I just made that word up) side of me begged to differ. So at 8pm my wonderful husband (who hates Halloween by the way) drove me to the costume store with all of the OTHER procrastinators were anxiously browsing the leftover hot-dog or scantily clad pirate costumes.

I was a pig. Yes, a giant, pink pig. I've never spent so much money on a costume- but I was desperate! I decided to get the best use out of it, I'm going to have to do some variation on it each year. Next year I'm thinking as dressing up in the same costume but wearing a "before" sign, and James will be bacon and wear an "after" sign. Hilarious right?

Mom brought Milly for the last hour of the day dressed in her cute as can be Dorothy costume. She kept laughing and saying "Whitney, pig, silly!" I agree Milly....


My friend Maren on the other hand- super crafty. And cute. And didn't look severely obese (something I didn't think about when buying a full body PIG costume).



Halloween night we ended up doing nothing really. We went out to Zupas for dinner with my mom. Very non-Halloweeny. James didn't mind ;-)

Later-ish (maybe the next day? I can't remember) we carved pumpkins with Ry and Kimber and Milly. Ryan decided to get all high-tech architect on the pumpkin and turn it into a piece of modern art. James assisted. The final product:


Intense right?

Moving on.

Moving!

We've moved! For no real or legitimate reason really, other than wanting to. We moved into a town house like 10 blocks from our old place (made moving a bit easier). I didn't realize 1)how much JUNK we had collected over the past two years and 2) how much ENERGY it takes to move. Most of the boxes are emptied by now. We still have to do all the little things like hang pictures, clean up the mess from moving in, etc. I think that'll happen a little bit slower though. Blegh. But I'm happy to have a new house. It's big enough that we can host Thanksgiving! I'm pretty stoked about that actually.

I think that catches us up to the present. Whew. That burden has been lifted. Oh, I am about to start Jillian Michael's 30 day shred. So if I don't ever blog again, it's because it killed me. I've heard intense things about it, but I'm excited to start. I better go eat a cookie or something to sustain me through the next 20 minutes...haha...(KIDDING).